Matt Tuckey is a writer from Oldham, England. He covers celebrities, night life, Manchester, fitness, creative writing, social media, psychology and events. Some of this may, in some way, help others. Or maybe it'll just entertain you for a while.
I booked today off to write up a Comic Con that I actually ended up not going to. The guests were interesting but not really my thing this time.
But this has meant I can get on with other things. Including this one, I have 3 blog posts to write. Also, expect a recipe review on the blog this Saturday.
But what’s happening in the city? Saturday night: new bar Katie O’Brien’s has opened and is already hugely popular. Manchester Nightlife are headed there Saturday night, first starting on the corner of Peter St in Dirty Martini.
New Meetup group Manchester Whisky Tasting Events opens with a tasting event on the 13th. I’m dieting for an upcoming wedding, but I’ll be all over some whisky tasting after that, depending on their events. I’m a big single malt fan. I went to a couple of tastings in Oldham about 15 years ago, then again in ‘12 and ‘23 in Scotland.
My friend Fay has set up Manchester Woman and Guys Having Fun meetup group (sic). It’s got a bit of everything: coffee meets, fitness, food, drink, movies. Keep an eye on it.
A heads-up for anyone visiting rooftop bar 20 Stories this summer: there’s a £10 door charge which ‘will apply from Saturday 23rd May until Monday 31st August (Bank Holiday) from 5pm onwards.’ I guess if you were the manager and it’s busy season, you may as well make the money.
After this a few of us took a look at the new Katie O’Brien’s on Peter St, formerly the Peaky Blinders bar. Good atmos, heaving with people, shame about the generic indie and pop music but a popular spot. I’ll be back there next week.
Scenes from Manchester's new Katie O'Brien's bar in Manchester
In other news, Brian O’Halloran – Dante off Clerks – liked my comment about the best films of ‘77, ‘87 and ‘94. Not sure why I picked Dumb and Dumber over Pulp Fiction. (As it happens, both directors – Tarantino and Farrelly – are Zionists anyway.)
In Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power, Law 19 is ‘Know Who You’re Dealing With.’
‘Deceive or outmanoeuvre some people and they will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. They are wolves in lamb’s clothing. Choose your victims and opponents carefully, then – never offend or deceive the wrong person.’
In the book, Greene regales the true story of a businessman and cattle ranch owner named Norfleet. In 1920, a travelling con man named Joe Furey, backed by a gang of swindlers and crooks, passed through Fort Worth, Texas, and stumbled upon Norfleet. Furey ran the con on the rancher, convincing him to ‘invest’ in several schemes, only to reward Norfleet with envelopes stuffed with newspaper clippings.
There were many victims from Furey’s gang, most of whom cut their losses and chalked it up to experience.
Not our Norfleet, though. Oh no. He found Furey in Jacksonville Florida and ‘personally hauled him off to face justice.’ He went on to Denver to find other members of the gang, bankrupting himself and causing his own divorce in the process. It took 5 years for him to destroy the whole con ring.
Let’s leap forward a century, to near present day UK.
In July ’24, Labour ousted The Conservatives after 14 years in power. A lot of Labour voters, myself included, entered this new era with cautious optimism. At last, the Tories were gone. Can we tax the billionaires now? Can we hire more GPs and Social Workers as a result? Can we have a sufficient amount of grit in winter?
I’m writing this in April / May ’26, and the answer has been a resounding ‘no.’
But these aren’t the only reasons Prime Minister Kier Starmer has dirt – and in fact blood – figuratively on his hands. He’s still supporting Israel even after the UN described their assault as a ‘full-fledged genocide.’
He openly admitted on air, on LBC, that he believes Israel does have a right to kill children in Palestine.
Then he admits he has family in Israel. That’s what all this is about. Yes, the Israeli government may be blackmailing the UK Prime Minister because he has family that live there.
His position is, and always has been, untenable.
We know, of course, that this assault on Gaza did not begin at the Nova festival attack in 2023. It started in 1948 when David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. U.S. President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation on the same day. There have been routine massacres of the Palestinian people ever since.
Regardless, immediately after the Nova attack – which I of course oppose – many people came out of the woodwork updating their Insta stories and grids, in support of Israel. Stories might disappear after 24 hrs, but my Omininotes don’t. I kept a list.
Did these people not realise that Israel has terrorising the Palestinians a similar way to how they treated the Israelis that 7th October, only on a routine basis, and for 75 years?
More to the point, do the people still supporting Israel not recognise that we will always remember that they chose to support a terrorist ethnocracy who were systematically wiping out a civilian population?
Many might. I won’t. Starmer himself will always carry that accusation, and that’s why the next vote will more than likely go to the Greens, giving Labour a solitary term in government – one in which they backed a genocide, jailed protesting grandmothers, impoverished disabled people and continued to allow billionaires to balloon their wealth while stripping our public services.
Labour is dead, and it’s because they underestimated the voting public.
More and more sky bars are opening in Manchester, offering cocktails and views of the city. You know me. I love a good cityscape. Come take a look at one of the latest views at Sora Sky Bar, inside the Malmaison, opposite Piccadilly Station. Manchester Nightlife are headed there Saturday.
A month to my sister’s wedding. Steadily getting fitter.
Hmm. Perhaps I wasn’t 100% honest with last week’s post on Castlefield: there was, in fact, a bristling of drama. But to describe it properly, I’ve got to go way back to early 2020.
It’s March. Our idiot then-PM Boris Johnson shuns the COBRA meetings and locks the country down late, writes ‘bollocks’ across the COVID medical info and allows Cheltenham Festival to go ahead. COVID rips through the community and, as the months go on, 200,000 people die, including a load of my work clients (in the public sector tied to healthcare) and my mate’s dad.
Early 2021: Pfizer announce a new, fully approved, fully tested and fully safe vaccine. It’ rolled out, and immediately COVID cases start to plummet. We’re heading back to normality. Sadly, a good number of my friends reveal themselves to be anti-vaxxers, and to believe a load of horseshit conspiracies. I try to talk some sense into them, but one thing anyone knows about me: I have no power of persuasion. The only thing I can do is block them and move on.
Summer 2024: I’ve blocked loads of people. I’ve moved on from entire groups. The few friends I still have are busy with kids and careers. I bite the bullet and shell out to be a Meetup organiser. I set up Manchester Nightlife, a group for nights out in the city with a plan to see some DJs, try some cocktail bars and be the first to visit the new places. As the weeks go on, the group grows as more people join.
May 2026. I now have 900 members, with more joining all the time. Last week’s Castlefield meetup takes place. I haven’t checked every member that joins, and unbeknown to me, one of the new members, AA, is someone I’d had to block on Facebook – not even that long ago – for spamming my profile with some crank far right website with batshit COVID conspiracies. I didn’t even notice he’d signed up to the event until he rocked up at Barca. He went to the bar. I mentioned this to one of the other group members, and then AA himself brought it up. I explained I just can’t have anti-vaxxers in my social media.
And that was that. No big argument. We were civil. Then he seemed to leave early.
Fast forward a week. Last night a few of us met in Roxy Ballroom near the Printworks for this week’s meetup. a new guy mentions that he’d been reading the reviews on the site, and someone had properly gone off at me. The Meetup website hadn’t notified me about this, so it’s news to me. I take a look, and it’s AA.
‘Gossiping host allowed members to be rude and disrespectful towards me. I had a polite demeanour throughtout. Made to feel unwelcome. Very poor.’ (sic)
Jesus fucking Christ. Like I've not known him for years. Whatever. The question remains: why would you go to a meetup ran by a guy who you gave some shit to online, and who then blocked you? Did you not think that they would have something to say?
Whatever. We moved on from Roxy’s to Kodo, a new hidden bar with a Japanese theme.
All I had to do was find the venue and show them the pic from the website to get in, and then find the actual bar. It’d be good to go back once an upcoming wedding is out of the way and I’m not avoiding alcohol. Good little joint if you can track it down.
Aside from all that, Magali Gorre liked my pic of us on Facebook. I am out of cereal, so my weight should start to drop soon, and I did a rare Parkrun with the family, getting 36:04. Watergrove in Rochdale is a tough, hilly course.
And that’s the week.
From Rukmini Iyer’s The Roasting Tin: Paprika Roasted Sweetcorn with Spring Onions, Feta and Lime.
Took 53 mins, was supposed to be 35. Fair. My pack of sweetcorn cobs had 6 in, 1 more than the recipe, so they all went in.
All came out simple, tasty, healthy. No complaints.
Well. That IDRA meetup didn’t take off, for whatever reason. Too niche, perhaps. Anyway, I ended up staying in last night. Hence, I accidentally woke up at 5am, when I’d like to have been coming home.
